


social links

by simplycarryon



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, let's be honest they can both help keep each other afloat, or at least exchange bad memes in these trying times, trash can garbage friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 07:02:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5154674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplycarryon/pseuds/simplycarryon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Friendship's pretty neat, or so your video games and anime dictate. But you are not an anime protagonist, and you're not sure you know what friendship is any more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	social links

**Author's Note:**

> written to fill a "sans and alphys being buds" prompt on [my tumblr](http://playeronecontroller.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> fun fact: my go-to "characters watching a shitty sci-fi movie together" movie is [Robot Monster](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yALzKhl2kg) and honestly it's an absurd amount of Really Bad, I do not recommend it but it's kind of amazing to watch with friends who can join you in throwing popcorn at the screen?
> 
> warning for General Undertale Spoilers, and a couple of Bad Words I guess

You like the idea of friendship. You do, really—you have an entire section of your extensive anime collection dedicated entirely to the Power of Friendship—and it’s nice, in a vicarious sort of way, to watch Mew Mew celebrate friendship and trust and love and all those good mushy gooey feelings you would like to feel.

But, you know, Mew Mew is a cute schoolgirl with cat ears and no gawky glasses who’s probably never experienced anxiety in her life, let alone crippling guilt-ridden panic attacks that make her hide under a desk for three hours and breathe into a paper bag, so _whatever,_ it’s not that vicarious. But it is nice, sometimes, and you like the idea of having friends. People who like you, because you’re you, and not because you’re pretending to be someone else.

The list of people who like you for you is pretty short. Undyne, of course, though you’re still trying to comprehend how a hot buff fish knight lady could even want to give you the time of day?? The fact that she wants to actually hang out and watch anime with you and _occasionally pick you up and bench press you like you weigh nothing_ remains an enormous mystery that the entire underground science division (you) has given up on solving. She calls you about the weather and that’s nerve-wracking but sometimes she remembers to text you instead, and sometimes she sends you pictures of training days with the royal guards and pictures of herself lifting the entire Hotland guard regiment and—yes, you have those saved.

There’s Mettaton, too, who occasionally remembers that you exist. Friendship with Mettaton is kind of like having a big lanky metal cat who likes to lie on everything you enjoy, and—usually sometimes you’re pretty okay with that even if you’re going to replace his legs with pipe cleaners if he drapes himself over your lab notes one more time. He’s an okay friend when he remembers how to be a friend and not a TV show host, and sometimes he just comes over and hangs out. He likes to lie on the floor for some reason; you’ve never been entirely clear on why that is, but you’ve long since stopped caring as long as he doesn’t trip you.

Asgore is… sort of a friend? Asgore cares about everyone, you remind yourself; he doesn’t have a thing for you. (Who would, you ask yourself, shoveling frozen yogurt into your face.) But he cares about you, even when you don’t answer his phone calls because even the thought of answering the phone make your stomach twist in knots and _you have told him this repeatedly_ but he still has a thing for hearing you talk rather than texting at you. Maybe his paws are too big for the texting feature that you definitely added on to his phone. Either way, he’s—he’s your friend, in as much as a king can be anyone’s friend. He definitely bought you that lizard-shaped cup and it’s super cute even though you put ramen in it that once time and then forgot to wash it for three weeks straight.

And then there’s Sans.

You’re not sure how to categorize Sans, aside from “that one guy,” because he’s just. There. All the time. He’s a sentry in Snowdin, and in Waterfall and Hotland and you think you’ve seen him in the Core and the MTT resort, and that one time he was chatting with Asgore, and—well, Sans gets around.

Mostly he comes by with Papyrus, who usually accompanies Undyne, which means that the three of them pile into your lab when you’re working on things and then they make noise and break whatever you forgot to hide before they showed up and Undyne suplexes your experiments and you’ve learned to live with that, really you have, because there’s nothing she can break so badly that you can’t fix it again and it’s kind of like a collaborative effort.

But Sans just likes to watch her and Papyrus break things, and occasionally he eats hot dogs (???) or drinks ketchup (?????) but mostly he just snickers a lot and tells bad puns while the yell friends do their thing.

Bad _science_ puns, you note, when he cracks an offhand physics joke and you just sort of stare at him because you honestly didn’t know if anyone else in the underground _got_ physics. 

You responded in similar kind (why can’t you trust atoms? because they make up everything) and now his name’s in your phone, too, alongside Undyne and Mettaton and Asgore, and you text him bad memes and pictures of food you get from Grillby’s (you think he has a thing for Grillby, maybe?? you ship it) and he sends you pictures of Undyne when she goes to his house to arm-wrestle or just straight-up-wrestle Papyrus. Sometimes the two of you hang out and watch bad sci-fi movies together, and you point out all the inconsistencies and throw popcorn at the screen when people mention time travel and killer robots, and—you guess that’s friendship. It’s not gooey mushy feelings, but you make each other laugh and maybe that’s what counts, in a world where you tend to forget that laughing’s a thing.

 

 

You text Sans, because—well, you text everybody, texting comes easier than a phone call and you can do it while hiding under your desk, your tail curled around your legs, coiled around your toeclaws that tap uneasily against your floor.

 _i know we said movie night 2night but i might have to cancel,_ you say, fighting your big dumb trembling hands for coherency. 

_whats up,_ he replies, less than 30 seconds later, and you'd thought he was at work but you’re not surprised he’s okay with texting on the job.

_uhhhh nothing rly just feeling like useless garbage lmao What The Fuck Is New_

You stare at that, delete it with shaking claws, and try again.

_something came up, nbd. give undyne my fries?_

There’s silence, for a moment, and then your phone beeps at you:

_thats suspicious tbh_

_yeah well maybe i just wanna be alone!!_ you text back with more force than is necessary, and you smash the send button before you can think about deleting it and you throw your phone before you can see his response. It skitters away across the floor, collecting dust, and you can hear it chirping but you ignore it and wish the guilty knots in your gut would go away or at least stop bringing company and making you want to cease existing.

Under the desk suits you. It’s nice. You’re on the floor by the garbage can where you belong and you pull your rolling chair in front of you and pretend it’s a wall that nobody can see through and you maybe fall asleep a little bit. It feels safe, here, under the desk, away from the letters that pile up unopened at your door, away from the messages Asgore keeps leaving asking what’s going on.

You wake up to slipper-shod feet in front of your desk, and you squawk indignantly because you can muster that at least, and then you pretend that you didn’t do that and you pull your lab coat up around your face and pretend you’re not home until Sans leans down enough to set a brown paper bag on the chair in front of you.

The bag smells like Grillby’s—warm and greasy and mouth-watering—and you remember, with a pang of regret and hunger, that you haven’t eaten in like 36 hours and maybe food is a good idea.

“Thought you could use a little company,” Sans says, still not addressing you directly; he has this way of talking at thin air that makes you feel a little more comfortable when you don’t feel like being talked at. “Got Grillbz to bag up a couple burgers and some fries. Best burgs in the underground.”

“I know,” you tell him, crinkling the paper bag with your claws, prying out a burger and taking a substantial bite. _God,_ Grillby knows how to cook a burger—crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside—you honestly should expect it from a monster made out of fire, but uh, stereotypes much? “Seriously though, I meant it when I said something came up,” comes out muffled by burger, but he understands, if his shrug is any indication.

“Hey, I get it,” he says, and he kneels, joining you on the floor. “Naps are important. I’m not judging.”

You look at him, and then down at your claws, and then you scoot over just enough to leave room to wedge a chubby skeleton in next to you under the desk.

“You can join me, if you want,” you offer, nudging the open bag at him with a toeclaw. “There’s still a burger left? And uh, I guess I lied, I really just… didn’t want to deal with people. Kind of feeling like trash tonight.”

Sans crowds in next to you, his bony elbow digging almost painfully into your side.

“I get that too,” he says, pulling a bottle of ketchup out of his jacket pocket (?????) and draining it dry (????????), still not looking at you. “And you can kick me out at any point, I’ll get out of your scales. If you really want to be alone. But uh, if you don’t… I brought a movie for movie night.”

“Yeah?” you ask, going for a handful of fries, eating them one by one and savoring the salt. You lick your claws, too, because what the hell, if he’s going to judge you at this point now he has _options._ “What kind of movie?”

“A bad one,” he says with a ketchup-stained grin that makes you smile a little bit in response. “There’s a robot monster in it and honestly it kinda looks like a gorilla with a fishbowl helmet. You in?”

You ponder that, eating another handful of fries. The grease is nice. You wonder if Grillby cooks with fire magic or with regular fire, or if he maybe uses himself to cook his menu items?? That would be weird. You’ll have to ask.

“Sure, why not,” you reply, finally, passing him the other burger. “I could use a shitty movie to take my mind off things.”

“Good, ‘cause I have it on my phone. We don’t even have to move.”

Sans takes the burger and passes you his phone, the screen glowing too-bright in the shadows under your desk, and you wipe your grimy tear-smudged glasses off on your coat and squint at the tiny screen as the black-and-white credits start rolling. (Why are the credits at the beginning of the movie? Who decided this.)

 

 

The two of you are really, notoriously bad at watching movies quietly. You’re all about audience participation; you shout at the screen and boo the villains and throw things when plot twists take you by surprise (though plot twists never seem to take Sans by surprise). You usually get shushed, which is why watching with Sans alone is a lot of fun, because he’s totally chill with you yelling over the dramatic dialogue about how shitty the dramatic dialogue actually is. Undyne and Papyrus mostly just get all up in arms about how you’re interrupting a monologue.

But this movie.

_This movie._

Sans was not lying when he said it was bad. He usually isn’t, though the two of you disagree on certain sequels you have had to pledge to not bring up in civil conversations. But this time, he was absolutely not lying, because at the end of the hour-long film you definitely feel like throwing the phone Sans has taken over holding.

“It was all just a _dream??”_ you screech, throwing your hands up in the air and smacking them pretty hard into the desk you’d forgotten is still over your head. “Ow.”

“You okay?” Sans asks, sounding like he might be trying pretty hard not to laugh.

“’M fine,” you tell him, sucking on a claw, still indignant. “Worst movie ever, hands down. Props to you for finding such quality garbage.”

“Even worse than Mew Mew Kissy Cutie 2?”

Your eye twitches, just a little bit. “Hrgmhmgh yes. Barely. At least MMKC2 had okay music and cute smooches?? This one was just, RO-MAN WISHES TO KNOW LOVE, WHY U NO LOVE ME, I MUST BE LIKE HU-MAN. I mean,” you pause for a second, thoughtful, “I guess it’s kind of sad. He did just want to be loved.”

“Don’t we all,” Sans says, resting his head against the wall.

You shoot him a funny look, and don’t say anything. He doesn’t say anything either, and you wonder if it was One Of Those Things Sans Says Without Explaining It, because he does that sometimes and you’ve come to accept it, like you’ve come to accept a lot of things about Sans.

“Look,” he says finally, when you don’t break the silence. “People like us, we’re hard on ourselves. That's life. But sometimes we have to make time for ourselves. Or for a good friend and a good burger. Maybe even a bad movie.”

You squint sideways at him, suspicious, and he gives you a lazy thumbs-up.

It’s quiet for a few minutes more, and you can hear his breathing patterns change from alert to drowsy—why does he need to breathe he’s a _skeleton_ but you’ve long since stopped asking these questions—and just as you think he’s about to doze off completely, you nudge him with an elbow.

“Thanks,” you tell him quietly, looking more at your claws than anything else. “For uh, for the food. And the movie. A-and hanging out with your local trash scientist garbage can.” You get another thumbs-up, and a grin, which makes you smile a little. “If you, um. I know I’m not the most reliable friend, but you have my number. For those days when _you_ need a good friend and a good burger. And maybe even a bad movie.”

He looks at you like you’ve just offered him a lifetime supply of ketchup. It’s—not a look you’d ever expected you’d get, sort of puzzled and grateful and enthusiastic all rolled up into a lack of eyebrows or any really distinctive emotive features, but you understand it, and you understand the hand he holds out in a seal-the-deal gesture.

“Bad movie pals?” he asks.

“Bad movie pals.” It’s nice to have something you can fall back on. You take the offered hand, feeling better than you have in a while.

And then you almost kick him out from under the desk when the whoopee cushion between your clasped hands sounds a very impressive raspberry in the quiet of your pledge.

 

 

You and Sans are friends.

Mostly that means bad movies, and occasional late-night talks about science. Sometimes you just hang out and watch Papyrus and Undyne cook and throw things and run in screaming circles outside in the snow.

The true definition of friendship still eludes you, but you’re pretty fond of this version of it.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Friendshipping](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5680993) by [AyuOhseki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AyuOhseki/pseuds/AyuOhseki)




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